HP Slate ready in 2011

HP's Slate will run off of Palm's WebOS and will be in the shops "early 2011." Phil McKinney, HP's vice president and chief technology officer for the company's personal systems group was chatting to VentureBeat when he spilled the beans.

McKinney said that the WebOS-based version of the company's slate is well on track for its release early next year. He added that a Windows 7-based slate would be in the shops long before that happens. The Microsoft based gear will begin shipping by the end of the year.

It looks like HP will be targeting its enterprise users. It has customers in retail and health care that have specific Windows 7 applications, yet they want that portability. HP originally announced it was working on a Windows 7 slate at the Consumer Electronics Show back in January.

Besides computing devices, McKinney elaborated on the company's plans to bring WebOS to printers in the near future.